Bacon eBook

While Bacon, in the shade, had been laying the foundations
of his philosophy of nature, and vainly suing for
legal or political employment, another man had been
steadily rising in the Queen’s favour and carrying
all before him at Court—­Robert Devereux,
Lord Essex; and with Essex Bacon had formed an acquaintance
which had ripened into an intimate and affectionate
friendship. We commonly think of Essex as a vain
and insolent favourite, who did ill the greatest work
given him to do—­the reduction of Ireland;
who did it ill from some unexplained reason of spite
and mischief; and who, when called to account for it,
broke out into senseless and idle rebellion. This
was the end. But he was not always thus.
He began life with great gifts and noble ends; he
was a serious, modest, and large-minded student both
of books and things, and he turned his studies to
full account. He had imagination and love of
enterprise, which gave him an insight into Bacon’s
ideas such as none of Bacon’s contemporaries
had. He was a man of simple and earnest religion;
he sympathized most with the Puritans, because they
were serious and because they were hardly used.
Those who most condemn him acknowledge his nobleness
and generosity of nature. Bacon in after days,
when all was over between them, spoke of him as a man
always patientissimus veri; “the more
plainly and frankly you shall deal with my lord,”
he writes elsewhere, “not only in disclosing
particulars, but in giving him caveats and
admonishing him of any error which in this action
he may commit (such is his lordship’s nature),
the better he will take it.” “He
must have seemed,” says Mr. Spedding, a little
too grandly, “in the eyes of Bacon like the
hope of the world.” The two men, certainly,
became warmly attached. Their friendship came
to be one of the closest kind, full of mutual services,
and of genuine affection on both sides. It was
not the relation of a great patron and useful dependant;
it was, what might be expected in the two men, that
of affectionate equality. Each man was equally
capable of seeing what the other was, and saw it.
What Essex’s feelings were towards Bacon the
results showed. Bacon, in after years, repeatedly
claimed to have devoted his whole time and labour
to Essex’s service. Holding him, he says,
to be “the fittest instrument to do good to the
State, I applied myself to him in a manner which I
think rarely happeneth among men; neglecting the Queen’s
service, mine own fortune, and, in a sort, my vocation,
I did nothing but advise and ruminate with myself ...
anything that might concern his lordship’s honour,
fortune, or service.” The claim is far
too wide. The “Queen’s service”
had hardly as yet come much in Bacon’s way,
and he never neglected it when it did come, nor his
own fortune or vocation; his letters remain to attest
his care in these respects. But no doubt Bacon
was then as ready to be of use to Essex, the one man
who seemed to understand and value him, as Essex was
desirous to be of use to Bacon.